


all my friends are sittin' in their graves

by nightcassette



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Bobby | Trevor Wilson-centric, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Hurt No Comfort, I mean tbf you read the title lol, I'm a Bobby apologist and it shows, in which we recognize that Bobby was a teenager, mentions of vomit, who lost his 3 best friends and his dream in the same night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:55:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29624517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcassette/pseuds/nightcassette
Summary: He gets there just in time to catch a glimpse of a familiar blue hoodie being loaded in and what looks like a puddle of vomit by a beat-up brown couch. His head spins. His stomach lurches. He feels like he might match that puddle with his own right there on the street.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Rose
Comments: 17
Kudos: 31





	all my friends are sittin' in their graves

The ambulance sirens should have been his first indication.

He’d heard them pass, suspiciously close, but it hadn’t bothered him in the slightest. This was Hollywood, after all. More than likely it was just somebody who’d gotten too wasted needing to get their stomach pumped. He’d learned to tune it out by then. It was all just background noise, before.

Or maybe it should have been the fact that the guys hadn’t shown back up from their break, and as often as Luke was late to absolutely everything else, he always got them back in the green room at least a half hour before a show. 

It doesn’t matter now, anyhow. The way he anxiously waited for them backstage, angry that they seemed to be taking their sweet time indulging in street food when they were about to play the gig of their goddamn lives, the way he’d been shouted at by the booking agent when he’d told them that _he didn’t know_ where the rest of his band was - it doesn’t matter.

Because all of a sudden, that bartender, the one he’d been trying and failing to impress just an hour prior, is bursting into the green room with eyes the size of dinner plates. “They called an ambulance,” she manages, her face flushed and chest heaving with each inhale like she’d sprinted there-

“What?” he asks dumbly, and she cuts him off.

“Your _band-_ ”

That’s all he needs to hear.

He lets her grab him by the wrist, drag him out of the dressing room, his guitar still strapped to his back. Tries not to trip over his feet as they make a mad dash up the stairs to the side exit, and the ambulances sound impossibly close then. And when he turns to the left, sure enough - there they are, across the main boulevard and down the alley.

He hadn’t noticed, but he’d stopped right in his tracks. It feels like he’s melting into the cement suddenly, like on a particularly hot LA day when his shoes would get stuck to the road and threaten to stay there. Rose is tugging on his wrist, a sense of desperation and a surprising strength in her slight body. “Come on!” she shouts, trying to pull him down the street with sheer force of will. “Come on, come on!” as if that’s all she can say.

His legs kick back into gear and he follows her down the alley and across the road - it’s a small miracle they don’t get hit by LA traffic, cars honking at them as they run - and over to where the ambulances are parked haphazardly in the backstreet. He gets there just in time to catch a glimpse of a familiar blue hoodie being loaded in and what looks like a puddle of vomit by a beat-up brown couch. His head spins. His stomach lurches. He feels like he might match that puddle with his own right there on the street.

It all goes by pretty quickly after that.

He doesn’t know how he ends up at the hospital. He’s just suddenly there, guitar clutched protectively in his arms, knee bouncing as he sits in a beige waiting room chair that’s just on the side of too firm. Fluorescent lights buzz above him, static, but it’s ambient noise compared to the thundering of his heartbeat in his ears.

And then a doctor is walking down the hall towards him with a clipboard, and then, and then.

Then he’s home.

His legs are sore from where his guitar had hit the back of his knees as he ran with Rose. His fingers streak with dark red lines from the steel strings, grasp tight around the neck just to keep himself tethered. His head hurts right behind his eyes, where tears had built, where despair makes a home. The night feels surreal; surely, he’ll wake up any minute now, Alex prodding him with a drumstick to rouse him. Surely, he’ll wake up and rub the sleep out of his eyes and go perform the greatest show of his life, the one Luke has been working them unrelentingly for.

The fluorescent red light in the microwave declares it to be half past four in the morning. His parents are asleep, resting soundly in their beds. Sleep seems too far away for him. He trudges across the living room floor, guitar dragging on the shag carpet, and into the kitchen. If he sits on the couch right then, he thinks that he might just sink down into it, that his chest would cave in. So he props his guitar up against the buzzing fridge, and situates himself on a slat-back chair at the breakfast table.

He’s not sure how long he sits like that for. The next couple of days aren’t any less of a blur. His body moves him forward, but he’s not there. He feels like his chest has emptied.

He’s sat at the kitchen table again a couple nights later - _alone, always alone_ \- staring at a plate of food he knows he doesn’t have the appetite for, when the phone rings for the third time that evening. He stares blankly at it for a few seconds, before finally pushing himself away from the table to go and pick up the receiver.

“Yeah,” he answers, voice raspy with disuse, watches as he curls the cord around his hand. If he pulls hard enough, he wonders, will it bruise?

“Bobby?” comes a familiar voice. Then, “It’s- It’s Rose. From The Orpheum. I tried to reach you at the studio number from the roster but-” A pause. “This was the second number on record for you. I’m sorry to bother you, it’s… Your equipment, it’s all still here. I’ve been trying to get the manager to hold on to it but he says they can’t keep holding it in the green room. I’m sorry, it’s- is there any way you could come get it?”

He’s on the floor. Curled up and leaning against a kitchen cabinet, unable to stop the sudden tears flowing freely from where he’d pushed them back before, the guttural wail that escapes his chest. Distantly, he can hear Rose’s garbled, gentle voice coming through the static, but all he can focus on is getting this visceral pain _out_.

  


  


He does go pick up their equipment. It sits parked in their band van just down his street for three months before he finally forces himself to drive it back to the studio. And he can’t stand being there, can’t stand that if the light hits right, he can still catch glimpses of Luke’s goofy grin hanging off the balcony, Reggie’s wiry limbs askew passed out on the couch with his bass clutched to his chest, Alex’s nimble fingers tapping out a new beat on the coffee table. All their things, their clothes, their little trinkets and songwriting books, gathering dust. He sets up their instruments as they had been before, and stands for another moment. His arms feel like they’re breaking out in hives just being there. He stays. He needs one last look.

He hasn’t touched his guitar in three months, but being back in the studio? He knows he has to pick it up again. The last thing they would want would be for their music to die with them.

Luke’s lyrics, Reggie’s melodies, Alex’s rhythm - he’ll get those out there. He has to.

And he’ll make them proud.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom, and I haven't posted fic at all in years, so bear with me lol. I wrote it a few months ago and came back to it tonight with a new stroke of inspiration, so I revised and figured I'd try posting.  
> We got so little of Bobby in canon and I absolutely love delving into his character. There's just so much there to explore.  
> Title is from "Ghosts" by The Head and The Heart because the lyrics fit and I couldn't help myself.
> 
> Thanks  allfourofthem for being my lovely Beta!
> 
> Thank you for reading. Cheers :)


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